Bruins fans have obviously learned their lessons about becoming overconfident over the last several decades.

Asked after the commanding victory over Montreal to rate their confidence level the Bruins could win the Stanley Cup this season, readers of TheBruinsBlog.net showed a decent amount of guarded optimism.

What is your confidence the Bruins could win the Stanley Cup?

3 (45%, 114 Votes)

4 (28%, 72 Votes)

2 (14%, 36 Votes)

5 (7%, 19 Votes)

1 (5%, 14 Votes)

Total Voters: 255

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Most ranked their confidence level at a 3, and those that rated their level as a 3 or 4 dominated the poll. In fact, out of 255 voters, 205 voted a 3 or better. Of course, only 19 of those voted 5 (17 less than voted 2). Committing to that 5 would obviously take a lot more faith than Bruins fans can be expected to have considering all the postseason disappointments since the 1972 Cup win.

So there are definitely some high expectations associated with those Bruins as the season winds down to its final eight regular-season games.

I honestly don’t see a team in the league that would rate a 5. Even the Canuck’s who have been dominant in the West appear beatable (I do think some of their numbers benefit from a fairly weak division with Calgary being the only team that even has a hope of the playoffs and they are in 9th so I am not sure if their numbers are reflective of a weak division or really dominant game).

I think this year in the East division the race for the title is almost anyone’s. I think Philly has earned their number 1 seed and is the team I think most likely to be in the final, but I also think they are beatable. Everyone else if they play good hockey could end up on top no matter what seed they started from. I actually think in some ways Boston in spite of leading its division is one of the weaker teams in the conference. The only team I have any confidence in taking 4 out of 7 with is Tampa and unless Tampa has a freefall I think they keep their 4th seed.

Nothing like some statistical mathematics on a Sunday morning. According to this data, those who voted a confidence level of 5 could almost be considered outliers and could potentially be removed from the data set to keep them from skewing the results. 5 is a bit high guys…